Sony’s large PS5 showcase easily outperforms the competition

Sony hosted a PS5 showcase today. He announced new games there. He showed other images of those he had already revealed. There were big names, the occasional dud, and a lot of CGI. In other words: a quite standard video game marketing event. Against the backdrop of the past year under a pandemic, however, it was like watching a press event from the times before.

One of the best RPGs of all time, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, teased a remake. God of War: Ragnarok got real gameplay and its name was finally confirmed. Insomniac, which just released two huge games, revealed two more, a Wolverine Game and Spider-man 2 no less, of which the latter already has a 2023 exit window. And Square Enix’s sorry looks like Infamous inside Final Fantasy XV. Plus a bunch of other games, like this sci-fi action platformer game about aliens expelling humans from Earth stepped off the bench to provide extra support and intriguing vibes.

Will any of these games be good? Will they look like their trailers? Will they even come out when Sony says so? I have no idea. But do you know what will probably be good? Everything Insomniac is working on, at least given its recent background. No surprise, as the Burbank-based studio will soon outside the staff of the rest of Sony.

Remember, Spider-Man: Miles Morales was so good. And now this storytelling team is launching into Logan, one of the few superheroes who hasn’t been completely hollowed out and reduced to dust by the past two decades of market saturation. Yet another grizzled white guy video game? Sure, but just this time it seems like a good idea. Naughty Dog, if you are working on a Nathan Drake 3.0, please remove it immediately.

What I’m saying is that it was a really good showcase in an otherwise odd year for games. Coming out of the rush of a new console launch in 2020, 2021 has seen many delays as developers grapple with the cumulative effects of the ongoing pandemic. While it was not a slow year for games — lots of amazing stuff went out this summer alone– it’s been a sluggish year for the big budget games industry marketing machine. But Sony has managed to deliver surprisingly satisfying hype boosters where others have struggled to find luck.

E3 returned after a year of hiatus. Do you remember the great shows there? Xbox featured from Bethesda Starfield, but the teasers were nothing to write home about. Nintendo promised more Nintendo games like WarioWare: Gather and Terror of the metroids. Both are strong staples but aren’t exactly obstacles. Ubisoft revealed that it is also doing more Nintendo games. Square Enix showed guardians of the galaxy. Ancient ring finally got an official gameplay trailer.

Then there was EA Play, which announced the return of Dead space with a remake of the first game, Quakecon, which showed 10 years later that it is not too late to keep releasing Skyrim, and the opening night of Gamescom, where the big news was a new marvel game of XCOM developers. Most of these shows were fine. Most of them could also have probably been ignored.

Why did Sony succeed where so many others have failed? These extremely common Marvel licenses certainly come in handy. Insomniac wasn’t acquired until 2019, a year after Microsoft started its spending madness, and it doesn’t appear to have skipped a beat. It’s not a hit against any of the top studios that make Xbox games. We haven’t really seen much of it yet, and what was teased has been a bit bland at times. A new Dark perfect will be cool, but these skyscrapers and sandstorms in the initial revelation left me a little meh.

Terror of the metroids looks awesome, but it’s hard not to feel like Nintendo has a giant Breath of the Wild 2 release date announcement burning a hole in his pocket. Clearly he kept his cards very close to the chest following slowdowns in covid-19. Remember the Switch Pro? September Nintendo Direct when?

There’s been a lot of talk in the Nintendo Direct era about the rise of publisher or developer-specific storefronts that, in the past, would only come to light as part of a much bigger event. Maybe even a simple blog post with a trailer. So far this year, Sony has managed to shine the spotlight, at least so far. Maybe the Game Awards 2021 will show them? What other superheroes are left?